(D) Bearers Of The Final Message. Series 4 Episode 4, Sifting And Collecting The Hadith

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• published: 20 Mar 2016
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The Sunni approach to passing on the teaching is that Hadith started to circulate with the names of those who had passed them on attached. These people were called the “transmitters.” Sometimes the report might come from a private part of the Prophet’s life transmitted by one of his wives. Sometimes the saying or action would be public and so there could have been dozens of people present who heard it and transmitted it to their own circle. We can see that some Hadith have multiple chains of transmitters going back to one or several people who were present to hear the Prophet say something. These chains of transmitters, technically called the isnad of a Hadith, generally started with someone who was in the presence of Muhammad when he said or did something. Such people were called the Companions or Sahaba. In time, the generally accepted definition of a Companion was someone who saw Muhammad whilst a Muslim and died as a Muslim. The sayings of Muhammad were passed throughout the community by word of mouth and eventually recorded in all sorts of early writings: history, biography (sira), Qur'an commentary (tafsir), theology, spiritual training (tasawwuf), etiquette (adab) and works on politics and the Arabic language. The number of such sayings in circulation in the early centuries would be many hundreds of thousands. It is claimed that Ahmad ibn Hanbal (d.855) had memorised “a million.” The ninth century proved to be a watershed for the collection and classification of Hadith. The two key people here are al-Bukhari (d.870) and Abu'l-Husayn Muslim (d.875; he is normally known simply as “Muslim”). The other four collections that make up the Sunni canon of six books of authentic Hadith were compiled by Abu Dawud (d.889), al-Nasa'i (d.916), al-Tirmidhi (d.892), and Ibn Majah (d.887). All six books together contain almost 20,000 authenticated Hadith and are now available in English translation. This does not mean that they are regarded as a complete collection of the only authentic Hadith or even that they contain all the sahih Hadith. Three things mark out the Shi'a approach to the Hadith from the outset. First, Imam Ali, the divinely appointed successor to Muhammad, was the first male Muslim and the constant companion of the Prophet during his lifetime. He was thus in a privileged position to observe and learn from Muhammad the Muslim way of life. Second, in Shi'a understanding, the Ahl al-Bayt or Family of the Prophet, were the bearers of the Inner Light of divine inspiration. This means that it was sufficient authentication for a Hadith that one of the Imams should declare it so to be. Third, the period after the death of Muhammad was one marked by strife. The Shi'a Imams are held to be preserved from error by virtue of the Inner Light given to them by God, therefore if one of the Imams authenticated a Hadith that was sufficient evidence for it to be accepted. There are three routes of authentication within the Shi'a system: first, from the Prophet through the transmission of the Imams; second, beginning with one of the Imams and transmitted through later Imams; and third, from an Imam transmitted through a chain of transmitters drawn from his followers. A massive compendium of Hadith was collected and arranged systematically by Al- Kulayni (d.939) called “The Sufficient Book of Knowledge of Religion” (Al-Kafi). This was followed by the work of Ibn Babawayh (d.991) commonly referred to as Faqih. Ibn Babawayh had a student known by his title Shaykh al-Mufid (d.1022) who gave greater weight to the use of reason in the science of Hadith. He in turn had a student called Al-Tusi (d.1067) who contributed the final two canonical collections: Tahdhib al-Ahkam, a commentary on Shaykh al-Mufid’s Hadith work, and Istibsar, his own study and classification of Hadith. These four works are considered to be canonical due to their wide acceptance amongst the scholars rather than any claim to them being in themselves infallible. Many Hadith occur in both collections and are thus shared between both traditions.